Inqlings: Fox show heats up Hot Potato

The Hot Potato Cafe in Fishtown was stuffed with customers Saturday night - the day after its

Gordon Ramsay

-led makeover aired on the Fox show

Kitchen Nightmares

.

"We ran out of pierogi, then the potato rosti . . . salads . . . Hot Potato chips," co-owner Claire Keller said, marveling yesterday at what she said was the family-owned restaurant's busiest night ever.

Last May, the bellicose Ramsay and camera crew spent several days on Girard Avenue, directing a new menu, atmosphere, and attitude. "He wanted us to wrap our minds around the restaurant," Keller said.

They'd run with Ramsay's changes for eight months, but before Friday's shot of publicity, "we were just hanging in there, paying our bills, like everybody else," Keller said.

Ramsay seemed to fancy Danielle Keller, Claire's young niece and the chef at the time. And so did viewers. "She got like 14 marriage proposals," Claire said, referring to the e-mails that poured in from all over. At one point over the weekend, the restaurant's Web site crashed.

Also in the food realm, South Philadelphia's Jenny Cross, 22, lost last night in the finale of the six-episode Food Network cooking series Worst Cooks in America. Cross, an avowed kitchen disaster, prepared a peanut butter-smeared fish dish in the first episode to "qualify" for 10 days' instruction under two professional chefs. The final challenge was preparing a three-course meal (for Cross, salmon tartare and potato pancake; roast cod with braised mussels; and molten chocolate torte) for three experts who had believed that the pros had cooked it. New York's Rachel Coleman, 23, won the $25,000 prize.

In a semirelated note: The Food Network will be at the Loews Hotel on Friday to scout two-person teams of aspiring restaurateurs for a show called 24 Hour Restaurant Battle. Details: http://go.philly.com/24hour.

The customer at the Queen Village shop Sophie's Yarns in late 2007 had a specific request: knitted hats, pom-pom at the top, in colors popular from the early 1970s. And she needed seven of same. Owner

Jennifer Carpenter's

work has reached the screen in

The Lovely Bones

. The hat, worn by actress

Saoirse Ronan

(Susie Salmon), is a piece of evidence in the girl's murder. The hat pattern is similar to one Carpenter sells, called Amelia. "I don't think anyone's going to run out and get the pattern for

The Lovely Bones

hat," she said.

A British film crew will be here tomorrow to follow Collingswood author

Matthew Quick

for a segment on

The TV Book Club

, which is the U.K.'s answer to Oprah's book club. The La Salle grad's novel

The Silver Linings Playbook

follows the 2007 Eagles season through the eyes of its protagonist.

Fox29's Sheinelle Jones turns up today on The Wendy Williams Show (10 a.m., Fox29) with a surprise: a bedazzled step stool intended for similarly height-challenged guests. Williams is listed at 5-foot-11.

Allison Lubert and Heather Esposito of the new Sweet Freedom Bakery (1424 South St.) got a call from actress Alicia Silverstone, requesting vegan/gluten-free goods. On Saturday, the owners hand-delivered the order to Silverstone, starring in the Manhattan Theatre Club's production of Time Stands Still. Included in the pack were a dozen chocolate cookie sandwiches.

And you might headline this one "Harry Pod-der": Actress Emma Watson, among a party of seven, rolled late Saturday into Pod in University City after watching a dance performance at Drexel. The group enjoyed a family-style meal and closed the place, about 1 a.m.